Monday, December 8, 2014

Silence Darkness Death Silence Darkness Death

So the party was rolling up on this castle tucked away in the excellent Shoe Thief map Jez drew for Red & Pleasant Land* which I have defaced with…
…"Pale King's knights fighting decimator".

Being hungry for adventure--and noticing the decimator had 60,000gp worth of gems embedded in its wrists--they decided to intervene.

So:

IN THIS CORNER, REPRESENTED ON THE TABLETOP BY THE RANCOR…
The Decimator

Colossal Avatar of Ona -- a deity of indeterminate gender and variety that snuffs out illumination in all forms. Particularly hates books, and it's priests punish speaking with death. Paradoxically also associated with light, but in forms like Cherenkov radiation and white phosphorus. (Ona invented by Odyssey)

AC: 19
HP: 300
3 Atks at +10 for 2d30/2d30/d100

1st round--Silence Aura 1000'
2nd round--Darkness Aura 200'
3rd round--Death Aura 20' (1st hit knocks you to zero hp, second kills anyone at or below zero)
…then it starts over again

Move: as human

(and yes this is this same rancor as this guy…


)


AND IN THIS CORNER, IN THE BLACK MILK TIGHTS…

The D&D W/PS team…

Stokely the tiefling wizard
Brian the human wizard
Kerowhack the human thief
Tizane Ildiko the tiefling cleric
Gypsillia the half-elf thief
Mariah the human cleric

The megalethality of the monster did what I wanted--it forced everybody to work together...

So Brian wasted no time casting Reverse Gravity...
…and now an interesting situation obtains: the spell's radius is smaller than the height of the Decimator, so he was reverse-gravited from his nipples to his toes but the top of him was fine.

(Also note Reverse Gravity has a ceiling of 100' in 5e.)

This cleverness freed everybody up to start artillerying the now-floating decimator, who had to make a Dex Save Vs Bryan just to move on account of having to use its big paws to walk.

Still, that left it with two attacks doing 2d30 each per round, and it (that is: I ) figure out it could throw pieces of castle at people….

At least until they disintegrated its right arm, at which point all it could do was hold on with its left and kick stuff.

Oh, and do the silence then darkness then death thing.

Kerowhack came through with a natural-20 with a dagger for 44 points of damage (non-spellcasters add their entire d20 roll to damage) and Mariah used locate creature during the darkness rounds.

There were a few close calls (Rolling d30s for damage creates so much tension at the table it's amazing. Try it. Stokes was down to 4 hp at one point and I rolled a two. Everybody exhaled.) but only Gypsillia fell afoul of the death aura, mostly because she was trying to climb into its butt and timed the rounds wrong --quoth Gypsillia: "Trying to get into a Decimator's butthole is like doing double-dutch".

Mandy shot a blade barrier at it in the dark and missed, then Stokely used Bigby's hand to shove it towards the barrier and that was the end of the Decimator.

So she's up there in the sky at zero hp, floating against the 100' anti-gravity ceiling along with dozens of shredded chunks of colossal flesh.

Someone had featherfall and cast it just as the spell wore off--allowing Gypsillia to avoid becoming Flatsillia and then healing her up.

Good job, team…though since they used so many of their best spells I surrrre hope there's not another one….




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5 comments:

piles said...

Hurray! You saved my gaming night.

I was a bit struggling with a nice and challenging encounter for my players tonight before they would arrive at the mountain where I was planning to combine Death Frost Doom with Hammers of the God (ie. secret dwarven history only to be found whilst releasing hordes of undeads).

d30s will be rolled tonight!

piles said...

one more thing. do you have a link to where odyssey described the monster? couldn't find it on his blog.

Zak Sabbath said...

1. She not he
2. It was not on the blog it was on G+

piles said...

1. oops. that was bad.
2. how to access that?

Zak Sabbath said...

join Google plus then add me as a friend, then explain who you are and then so the same with Natalie B (oddyssey)